Reads a bit like a screenplay from time to time but then again it's a movie I would enthusiastically watch so I can't even say I'm mad about that. A lovely new space opera and a bit of chicken soup for the feminist soul. ( )

I Really Wanted to Like This

After listening to the acknowledgements, the author seems genuinely lovely, have a way with words, and clearly put a great deal into the creation of this novel. I just wish I enjoyed the book as much as the acknowledgements.

This is a sci-fi novel. Unfortunately, that's really all I can say as it just slid off my brain as I was listening to it. If you want a soupson of The Murderbot Diaries with some sci-fi antics, you might get something out of this.

The only things that really stood out were the way dialogue is written with "X said" after every phrase, which takes all rhythm out of every conversation. Readers are generally trusted to follow a conversation between two people, but not here. This isn't helped by the way the narrator handles this predilection.

The other is much more positive and I would be lying if it wasn't the main reason I decided to stick with it and finish the book. The inclusion and discussion around gender and the characters is handled really well, which was honestly a delight to read. While I have a lot of other criticisms and largely didn't enjoy this book, I truly appreciate the effort the author went to in this regard, especially after so much awfulness in many of sci-fi and fantasy offerings.

I hate leaving bad reviews, especially for authors who really seem to care and are trying, but this really wasn't for me and read like a decent amateur affair.

The story was also let down by narration that was flat with some odd and, I'm almost certain, at least one mispronunciation or incorrect word used. Sadly, they did nothing to elevate the story and only made the issues more glaring with how they hit them. ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday. Technically, I guess this isn’t a series. This book stands alone fine, but there’s another book published in the same world and I wasn’t sure if she might plan to write more. Anyway, the verdict is: nope.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Maria Liatis. I don’t think she was a terrible narrator, but her reading style didn’t work well for me and I didn’t think she was a good fit for this story. I might not have had any complaints if I’d listened to her narrate a different kind of story.

There are a lot of female characters, and I didn’t think the narrator had a sufficient range to distinguish between them. Except for one woman with an English accent, and one woman who spoke with over-the-top manic cheerfulness, the voices all sounded pretty much the same to me. Additionally, I didn’t really feel like her voice was well suited for a cast of characters that consisted mostly of mercenaries. The characters all sounded kind of like sweet, cheerful young women. I would have expected a little more grit in there, at least for a few of the characters, but the grit was completely absent.

One of the other issues I had was probably more the fault of the text than the narrator, but I think she could have mitigated the issue if she’d made different reading choices. The author uses the word “however” a lot. At times it gets borderline incessant and I’ve started to get twitchy about hearing that word now. Fortunately, people don’t use it a lot in real life speech, at least not in my experience, so hopefully I won’t start grimacing at random people. The narrator sometimes reminded me of a text-to-speech program, because you could practically hear the comma following the word “however” every time she said it, much like how text-to-speech programs pause unnaturally long when they encounter a comma in the text. There was usually a slight emphasis on the word, and then a pause, which really made it impossible to miss the fact that the author had used the word yet again. If she’d read that word faster, or with less emphasis, it might not have stuck out to me as badly. I’m really curious about how many times the word actually existed in the text, and if it was as bad as it seemed to me or if it was the narration style that made it seem worse than it really was.

Story
When the story starts off, we’re briefly introduced to an alien race on a human-occupied planet who call themselves the emissaries. They can mimic humans, allowing them to blend in, but their natural communication method is via scent. Few humans are aware that they’re on the planet, and the emissaries want to keep it that way, but the humans who do know about them are exploiting them for their own selfish reasons.

I was quite interested in the very beginning. The aliens seemed interesting, although I wondered how their bodies managed to manufacture so many different scents to be used for communication, and the premise seemed to be one I’d enjoy. And then the story immediately abandoned the emissaries and went off to introduce us to a bunch of seemingly-random, cardboard, human mercenaries. I completely lost the flow of the story at this point, and I was never quite sure if it was because it was written in a confusing manner or if it was just because I was having trouble giving the audiobook sufficient attention, or if it was because the characters all sounded the same to me – both literally in terms of the narrator and figuratively in terms of the tone of the text. It was probably some combination of all three things.

I never felt any attachment to any of the characters. There’s a lot of banter between the mercenaries, which is normally the sort of thing I love, but it did absolutely nothing for me here. I felt like the author was trying too hard at times, but it might just be that I was so disinterested that the banter was amazing and I was incapable of feeling it.

The story did get more interesting in the second half when we finally got back to the emissaries’ storyline, but it wasn’t enough to really pull me back in and we still focused mainly on the mercenaries. I’m rating this at 2.5 stars and rounding down to 2 on Godreads. Also, I might need to buy a stress ball or something, because I think the next time I hear the word “however” I’m going to break something if I don’t have a healthier option at hand. ( )

2023 book #23. 2021. A female/non-binary band of mercenaries get hired to protect a village of indigenous aliens on the planet Persephone from a greedy corporation. Good story, good characters and a good read. ( )

Thank you to Netgalley and Gallery for the ARC

So this was sort of a hard book to get through. The beginning had promise, introducing some intriguing world building and a fascinating alien race. I was also excited for a diverse and queer sci-fi with nonbinary rep. First, this was a multiple POV story, that didn't have very distinct voices. I was confused at the start of each chapter for a large chunk of the book which character we were following. I also just did not care about any of the main cast, they felt quite flat and their relationships were not compelling. It took me about 30% of the way in to finally get a feel for where the story was going, needless to say it felt like a lot of set up. But then, set up for what exactly? There didn't seem to be anything driving these characters so the plot felt sloppy. I ended up purchasing an audiobook to aid me as I read because it was hard to follow and stay interested.

On another note, this book claimed to have queer and nonbinary rep, but then made non-binary out to be a third gender. As a non-binary individual myself, I did not really like this "rep". When a protagonist was describing a group of people, it was easily discernible who was "male", "female", and non-binary. It would be one thing, if this was some alien race that has a different set of sexes then humans, but these were humans. One would think that an advanced human civilization would not have such a binary sense of gender if non-binary was going to be included.

Once I finished the book, I felt myself thinking, "what was the point?". Not once did I connect to any of the characters or feel enticed by the plot, it was just a really odd read. ( )